


Light in Likely Places

by dearcaspian



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Cecil is a Dork, Fluff, Gen, M/M, Probable misinformation about how stars work, Stars, Typical Night Vale Weirdness, an overwhelming amount of fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-06
Updated: 2018-04-06
Packaged: 2019-04-19 01:09:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14225832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dearcaspian/pseuds/dearcaspian
Summary: “The thing is,” Cecil tries again, eyes still closed, “it’s like mountains, you know? If I start believing in stars, then I might put my faith in mountains, and what would be next? Believing in helpful librarians?"“Librarians are helpful everywhere but here,” Carlos corrects with a small frown. He still has no idea what Night Vale’s version of librarians are. “I’ll explain it to you some other time. And this is definitely not a stepping stone to mountain, uh, believing. Now open your eyes.”





	1. Chapter 1

“No.”

“Cecil, I’ve already set out the telescope. The least you could do is open your eyes.”

“Nope.”

“You’re being childish.”

“I’m not a child, I’m exactly-”

“Yes, I remember how old you are. Please don’t tell me again because I’ll have another existential crisis. Now open your eyes.”

“No.”

“Cecil.”

Carlos tilts the telescope a little further into the sky, mostly void with a hint of mauve, and glances over. His stern frown goes unnoticed. This is entirely due to the tightly shut eyes of the radio host beside him, mildly pained expression an odd contrast to how comfortably he sits on the blanket spread across the sand. It is ridiculous and altogether not endearing, the scientist tells himself.

“I thought you wanted to learn more about them,” Carlos coaxes. He ambles around the telescope and sits beside Cecil, their shoulders brushing. “Isn’t that why we came out here?”

Here suggested quite a ways they had traveled, but the large bank behind the Arby’s was a mere ten minutes from the radio station. It was not an ideal location for stargazing, as the restaurant's buzzing neon sign and accompanying lights floating a few hundred feet above let off enough illumination to pollute much of the surrounding atmosphere; but second dates were tricky things to navigate. Carlos figured this would be casual enough, and most importantly, free of encroaching shadow entities.

“You asked to go,” Carlos says gently. “Right?”

“Yes, but…”

Cecil pauses, in no way about to admit that while the fictionalization of stars was interesting enough for campfire stories and the like, he may have exaggerated his enthusiasm about the all-encompassing void of space to match Carlos’s own. Listening to the scientist ramble on about topics which excited him was a favorite pastime. More importantly, it is also quite an awkward subject, breaking the news to an outsider about star misconceptions.

“The thing is,” Cecil tries again, eyes still closed, “it’s like mountains, you know? If I start believing in stars, then I might put my faith in mountains, and what would be next? Believing in helpful librarians?"

“Librarians are helpful everywhere but here,” Carlos corrects with a small frown. He still has no idea what Night Vale’s version of librarians are. “I’ll explain it to you some other time. And this is definitely not a stepping stone to mountain, uh, believing. Now open your eyes.”

With something akin to a pout, Cecil slowly does as told. The pearly white luminescence of his pupil-less gaze seems to gleam in the dark. He looks in Carlos’s direction with a hopeful smile.

“Welcome back," Carlos says, grinning. “Now lie back, so you’ll have a better view. We can start with constellations, and then move onto some individual stars, if that’s alright?”

Cecil nods, albeit hesitantly, and lies flat on his back. Carlos shifts to join him, the chilly breeze stirring the ends of his slightly sandy lab coat. They lay like this for a few moments in complete, content silence, before Cecil points a figure upward towards the moon.

“So is the moon a star?” he asks, and Carlos hears the curiosity in his voice he half heartedly suppresses. “Theoretically speaking, of course.”

“The moon is not, but the sun is,” Carlos replies patiently. “There is a star out there called a hypergiant, Eta Carinae, which shines even brighter than the sun.”

“So there could be a town out there in a desert like this dealing with even hotter weather?”

“Technically, I guess.”

“Can you point out a constellation?”

Cecil sounds almost shy, now, and eager. Carlos puts an arm straight up and indicates a gathering of stars straight above them. 

“That one right there is called Ursa Minor, or the Little Dipper. It looks like a ladle with a handle to most people.”

“What is the bright one called?”

“Polaris, or the North Star. If you’re ever lost, you could locate it and use it to point you North.”

“What are stars made of? Theoretically.”

“Basically? They’re giant balls of exploding gas,” Carlos says, bringing his arm back down by his side. His fingertips brush against Cecil’s hand. “For a long while I believed what my sister used to tell me: they were angels too far away to properly see.”

“Angels don’t exist,” Cecil reminds him calmly.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Must I look through the telescope?”

“Not if you don’t want to.”

Again it is quiet. Carlos tilts his head and looks to Cecil, whose eyes are now wider than they had been, as if he were trying to desperately absorb and simultaneously destroy all the new knowledge coming his way, years of denying the existence of common, everyday things wrestling for dominance. Despite this, he appears almost relaxed, suddenly younger than the weight of the world he sometimes seemed to carry. Carlos thinks to himself that perhaps this dating thing isn’t too scary at all.

“Is that a constellation?” Cecil asks, breaking through the peace of the night and distant cars on the not so distant road. “The one over there?”

Carlos follows the direction Cecil points towards. 

“That’s actually… well, we don’t have a name for that one yet. Apparently, Night Vale has some stars which don’t exist anywhere else.”

“Hmm. It’s very dull. Can I name it?”

Amusement lifts Carlos’s lips. In a tiny feat of daring, twines the fingers of his right hand in Cecil’s left. The radio host softly squeezes his palm, the gesture tentative, experimental, and neither looks at the other lest they ruin whatever is brimming in the air around them.

“Sure,” Carlos tells him. “What would you like to call it?”

“How about Steve?”

“Why Steve?”

“Oh, no reason.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

“Carlos?”

Cecil opens the lab door slowly, stepping cautiously around the corner. A single strip of fluorescent lights glows dimly above the pristine countertops and rows of neatly arranged equipment casting faint shadows against the walls. Except for the muted humming coming from a machine in the far corner, Cecil’s soft footsteps are the only sound.

“Hello?” he tries again. He tiptoes further inside, closing the door behind with a quiet click. “Carlos?”

No one answers.

He resigns himself to wait, though this is no burden. Disregarding his concern at the lack of any other presence, for the scientist had sent him a text not ten minutes ago asking him to come down, he feels a sudden rush of excitement at the large room before him. An excellent opportunity had suddenly provided itself. He had not been inside the lab before, and the chance to study up close the very tools and appliances Carlos used to investigate mysteries around town was entrancing.

It is dim within, but he has no trouble seeing. As he surveys neat lines of empty flasks down from a grouping of microscopes, the desire to touch something becomes overwhelming.

Like that black solid cube a few feet away. Yes, that would do nicely.

“Hang on, Cecil, I’m coming. And don’t touch that!”

Cecil retracts his hand guiltily and swivels to the sound of Carlos’s voice. The scientist emerges from a side door, spilling light into the laboratory. His hair, lovely as ever, is in a state of disarray, and he lets out a long, slow breath as he leans against the nearest counter.

“I’m sorry Cecil,” he apologizes. “There was a spider. I think it’s a spider. It’s been living in the cabinets where we keep the extra test tubes, but a few minutes ago it appeared on my desk and began eating my paperwork, and it, uh…”

A low, cavernous rumble echoes from the door Carlos exited moments before. Cecil stands on his toes and tries to catch a glimpse over Carlos’s shoulder.  

Carlos waves him off. “It’s fine. I’ve contained it for now.” He backtracks and gingerly shuts the door, cutting off the growling.

“Is that what you called me for?” Cecil asks, moving nonchalantly away from the cube.

Carlos watches the motion with obvious amusement. “No. You didn’t try to touch that, did you?”

“Of course not.”

“Good, because it would have electrocuted you. I still haven’t figured out why. Or… what it is. Anyways, come upstairs. I’ve got something to show you.”

Cecil follows him up a narrow staircase and into a much smaller room. This one is less organized than the one they had left. Photographs and maps are tacked across the walls haphazardly. Various jars filled with unrecognizable blue fluids sit in a corner, a t-shirt lies discarded across the ragged couch, bits of metal and wood are stacked next to a miniature fridge. They move past the homely disorder to a familiar telescope, which points out a singular window. The moon’s slanted silver glow is the only distant blip in the sky.

“We use this as a break room, kind of, “Carlos explains as he pulls over a chair in front of the telescope. He motions Cecil over. “Lately, it’s become an ‘I don’t know what to do with this, so I’ll put it up here’, room.”

Cecil grins. “Usually people have kitchen drawers for those situations.”

“Don’t worry, we’ve filled up all the drawers downstairs before we ran out of room. Here, take a seat.”

“More stars?” Cecil questions curiously as he sits. “Which aren’t real in the slightest,” he adds as an afterthought.

“Sort of. It’s one particular star.”

Carlos leans over and adjusts the telescope. “Well, two particular stars. This should be aimed directly towards them. Take a look.”

Cecil hunches over, peering through the lens, careful not to touch it as he does so. Once the two points of light come into focus, he lets out a murmur of surprise.

“They look so close,” he exclaims. “Not like satellites at all.”

“They aren’t,” Carlos reminds him softly. “These two definitely are not. Notice how they were side by side? It’s called a binary system. Although two stars in a system like that rotate around the same mass, they really seem to orbit each other. And, here’s the thing-”

He pauses, a brief flash of uncertainty visible on his features.

“The star on the left, the larger and brighter one, well, we were able to estimate how long it’s been there, and we think it’s roughly two hundred and thirty-six years.”

“That’s-”

“Yeah. The other one though, the smaller one, has only stuck around for a single year.”

Cecil stares up at him with a furrowed brow. “Which is how long you’ve been in Night Vale.”

“Exactly. And none of us can figure out a likely origin for either star, or why they seem to exist in these skies above and none other.”

This makes little sense, Cecil wants to say, but he had spent the past years of his life before Carlos came along in a world that often made no sense at all, so it doesn’t really bother mentioning. Strange circumstance and otherworldly occurrences were commonplace. He was used to navigating the mildly fearful and the all out terrifying without batting an eyelid, but these stars fell into a category of their own.

“I’ven named the bigger one Palmer One.”

“What?”

Carlos nervously clears his throat.

“The older star,” he says. “We’re calling it Palmer One now.”

“But-”

Because both stars appear stable, meaning they’re not going anywhere time soon, and they’re both caught up permanently in the other’s orbit, and I’d, uh, well, I’d…”

He trails off. In the back of Ceci’s mind, the rest of his unsaid sentence completes itself.

“I’d like to stay caught up in your life for a while, too,” Cecil says quietly. “But one question.”

“Yes?”

“Are they anywhere near Steve’s constellation?”

Relief lightens the burden on Carlos’s shoulders he did not know he had been carrying. He shakes his head with a laugh.

“No, Cecil, they’re not. Our stars are much farther away.”

“Good,” Cecil says. “I’m not sharing you with him.”

“You don’t want to share the sky, you mean.”

“It’s the same thing.”


End file.
